Greenhill/LCAS

As promised in this week's New Briefs, here's the full text of Greenhill Executive Director Cary Lieberman's answers to EW's questions about the Lane County Animal Services/Greenhill Human Society Transition.

My understanding is that the county commission votes today (6/25) on the Greenhill contract with LCAS? Would Greenhill takeover July 1?

I believe that the county commissioners voted yesterday to give permission to public works staff to enter into a contract when one is drafted. We had our first contract meeting with Lane County today. Everyone is still hopeful for a smooth transition on July 1st, but we still don’t have a contract drafted with Lane County.

How is the transition going? Will LCAS volunteers undergo Greenhill training? How much (if any) overlap will there be in things like running foster/volunteer programs?

We are still in contract talks and working out details about the transition with all of the jurisdictions. There is a lot to figure out.

Greenhill’s goal is to ensure as smooth a transition as possible for the animals, and one thing that we have started, even without a contract in place is to begin meeting with the volunteers who have been helping the animals at LCAS. We know that we will need everyone’s support and there are people eager to help. We hope that the current LCAS volunteers will continue to volunteer. Over time, we will wrap them into our training program, but because of the timing we won’t make that a pre-requisite to continue their volunteer activities. Greenhill currently has two full-time employees who manage our volunteer and foster programs, and all staff are trained to work closely with volunteers. We don’t anticipate the need to expand volunteer program management staff.

On if kittens with ringworm are being put down:

We have successfully treated many ringworm cases, and unfortunately there were some that we were not able to treat. Ringworm is a challenging disease. On one hand, it is often treatable if the animal is in a home environment and is otherwise healthy. In a shelter environment, which is often more stressful and may be populated with a number of animals with compromised health, it spreads easily and is often considered untreatable in that environment. At Greenhill, we look at it on a case-by-case basis. In dogs, we generally consider it treatable. For cats, it depends in large part on whether a foster home is available, and/or if there are other immune system or other serious concurrent disease concerns which would complicate treatment and make it less likely to be successful.

This disease in particular is one that we, and many shelters are trying to overcome. Most recently, in 2010 the Dane County Humane Society in Madison, Wisconsin opened a 2,000 square foot, $400,000 ringworm treatment facility. Until that time, they had a treatment program that was very similar to our own and relied in large part on foster families. http://www.maddiesfund.org/Resource_Library/Beating_Ringworm_in_Shelter_Cats.html We are hopeful that someday this community will support a similar construction project.

Is there a document with everything laid out about the Greenhill LCAS issue?

I know that the City of Eugene is working on a FAQ document regarding the transition and we are working on that with them. I do not know if Lane County is working on something similar at this time.